Product Design & Development

• Main sources of design ideas come from customers providing feedback.
• The supply chain provides design ideas from suppliers.
• Competitors can provide design ideas when recognizing competitive threats.
• Research is another source of design ideas

Research

• Basic research aims to advance knowledge about a subject without expecting immediate commercial applications.
• Applied research aims to achieve commercial applications.
• Development converts the results of applied research into useful commercial applications.

Phases in Product Design and Development

• Introduction Phase- a product or service is introduced however it may be treated as a curiosity item by potential buyers.
• Buyers may suspect bugs and expect a price drop after the introductory period as the demand increases.
• Growth Phase occurs when design improvements and increasing demand yield higher reliability and lower costs, in turn growing demands.
• Maturity Phase occurs when a product or service reaches maturity and demand levels off and only a few design changes are needed as costs are low and productivity is high.
• Decline Phase requires decisions on whether to discontinue a product/service and replace it with new ones or abandon the market.

Issues in Product or Service Design

• Standardization: the extent to which there is an absence of variety in a product, service, or process.
• Products are made in large quantities of identical items, ensuring that every customer or item processed receives essentially the same service.

Advantages of Standardization

• Fewer parts to deal with
• Reduced training costs and time
• More routine purchasing, handling, and inspection.
• Orders are fillable from inventory
• Opportunities for long production runs and automation

Disadvantages of Standardization

• Designs can be frozen too early.
• High cost of design changes.
• Decreased product variety.

Mass Customization

• Strategy is to produce basically standardized goods or services, but incorporating some degree of customization in the final product or service.
• Facilitating Techniques: Delayed differentiation is a technique for producing, but not quite completing, a product until customer preferences are known.
• Modular design involves component parts being grouped into modules that are easily replaced or interchanged.

Reliability

• The ability of a product, part, or system to perform its intended function under a prescribed set of conditions.
• Failure is a situation in which a product, part, or system does not perform as intended.
• Reliabilities are always specified with respect to certain conditions, such as normal operating conditions.
• The set of conditions specifies an item's reliability.

Robust Design

• Involves designs that result in products or services that can function over a broad range of conditions.
• The more robust a product or service, the less likely it will fail due to a change in the environment in which it is used or performed.
• It pertains to product as well as process design.

Degree of Newness

• Can range from the modification of an existing product/service to an entirely new product/service.
• This includes modification of an existing product or service.
• Expansion of an existing product line or service offering
• Clone of a competitor's product or service
• Introduction of a new product or service.

Quality Function Deployment (QFD)

• An approach that integrates the "voice of the customer" into both product and service development.
• Ensures that customer requirements are factored into every aspect of the process.
• Listening to and understanding the customer is the central feature of QFD.

Kano Model

• Basic Quality: Refers to customer requirements that have only limited effect on customer satisfaction if present, but lead to dissatisfaction if absent.
• Performance Quality: Refers to customer requirements that generate satisfaction/ dissatisfaction in proportion to their level of functionality and appeal.
• Excitement Quality: Refers to a feature or attribute that was unexpected by the customer and causes excitement.

Service Design

• Key issues in service design include the degree of variation in service requirements.
• The degree of customer contact/involvement in the delivery system.

Well-Designed Service Systems

• Consistency with the organization's mission
• Being user-friendly
• Robustness if variability is a factor
• Easy to sustain
• Cost-effectiveness
• Obvious value to the customer
• Effective linkages between back-of-house and front-of-house operations
• A single, unifying theme (e.g., convenience or speed)
• Design features and checks that ensure reliable, high-quality service